When Roland Emmerich isn’t busy making sequels to his own films, he’s planning remakes of his own films. According to a press release from MGM and Warner Brothers, the director is hoping to remake his 1994 movie Stargate, right after he finishes up the back to back Independence Day sequels.
The press release states that Emmerich and original co-writer Dean Devlin are now partnering with Warner Brothers and MGM to launch a trilogy based on Stargate, with Emmerich directing and Devlin producing. The original film starred Kurt Russell and James Spader, and we can bet that they probably won’t be coming back for this one. The notion surrounding the film and its spin-off franchise is the existence of a “Stargate” that creates an interstellar wormhole capable of transporting people to another Stargate many light years away.
Emmerich is currently shooting Stonewall, a film about the Stonewall Riots in 1969, and Independence Day 2 already has a 2016 release date, with the third film to come shortly thereafter (if the scripts ever get re-written). I suppose that the assumption is that Stargate will come sometime after that, which means that we’re looking about five years into the future, at least. That’s not such an extreme possibility, of course, given that studios have begun planning their slates well into the next decade. Of course, Stargate could happen much earlier if Independence Day 2 does not get off the ground shortly.
The question for our speculative minds now is whether or not Emmerich should remake Stargate. I think that answer is probably that he should not. No one has been demanding a return to that world, and the original film was only released ten years ago. Not that it much matters: it seems that Hollywood is launching reboots of franchises these days before the original films have even been released on DVD.
We’ll keep an eye on what Emmerich is up to and let you know about news on Stargate when and if it happens. At least we still have Independence 2 and 3 to look forward to, right?
